Stubborn Structures : : Reconceptualizing Post-Communist Regimes / / ed. by Bálint Magyar.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Central European University Press eBook-Package 2019
• MitwirkendeR: Bíró, Zoltán Sz.,; Chayes, Sarah,; Fisun, Oleksandr,; Hale, Henry E.,; Haraszti, Miklós,; Kazakevich, Andrei,; Kornai, János,; Magyar, Bálint,; Magyari, László Nándor,; Minakov, Mikhail,; Minzarari, Dumitru,; Mizsei, Kálmán,; Petrov, Nikolay,; Pikulik, Alexei,; Rouda, Uladzimir,; Ryabov, Andrey,; Viktorov, Ilja,
• HerausgeberIn: Magyar, Bálint,
• Place / Publishing House: Budapest ;, New York : : Central European University Press, , [2019]; ©2019
• Year of Publication: 2019
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (712 p.)

The editor of this book has brought together contributions designed to capture the essence of post-communist politics in East-Central Europe and Eurasia. Rather than on the surface structures of nominal democracies, the nineteen essays focus on the informal, often intentionally hidden, disguised and illicit understandings and arrangements that penetrate formal institutions. These phenomena often escape even the best-trained outside observers, familiar with the concepts of established democracies. Contributors to this book share the view that understanding post-communist politics is best served by a framework that builds from the ground up, proceeding from a fundamental social context. The book aims at facilitating a lexical convergence; in the absence of a robust vocabulary for describing and discussing these often highly complex informal phenomena, the authors wish to advance a new terminology of post-communist regimes. Instead of a finite dictionary, a kind of conceptual cornucopia is offered. The resulting variety reflects a larger harmony of purpose that can significantly expand the understanding the “real politics” of post-communist regimes. Countries analyzed from a variety of aspects, comparatively or as single case studies, include Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Hungary, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Poland, Romania, Russia, and Ukraine.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Table of Contents -- List of Figures -- List of Tables -- Editor’s Preface -- I. CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORKS -- Introduction: Freeing Post-Soviet Regimes from the Procrustean Bed of Democracy Theory -- The System Paradigm Revisited: Clarification and Additions in the Light of Experiences in the Post-Socialist Region -- Neopatrimonialism in post-Soviet Eurasia -- Towards a terminology for postcommunist regimes -- II. ACTORS OF POWER -- Putin’s neo-nomenklatura system and its evolution -- Republic of Clans: The evolution of the Ukrainian political system -- Is Belarus a Classic Post-Communist Mafia State? -- The Romanian Patronal System of Public Corruption -- III. TECHNIQUES AND TOOLS -- The Russian Party System -- The Belarusian non-party political system: Government, trust and institutions, 1990–2015 -- Illiberal State Censorship: A Must-have Accessory for Any Mafia State -- Disarming Public Protests in Russia: Transforming Public Goods into Private Goods -- IV. WEALTH AND OWNERSHIP -- The Institution of Power&Ownership in the Former USSR: Origin, Diversity of Forms, and Influence on Transformation Processes -- Russia’s Network State and Reiderstvo Practices: The Roots to Weak Property Rights Protection after the post-Communist Transition -- From Free Market Corruption Risk to the Certainty of a State-Run Criminal Organization (using Hungary as an example) -- V. CONTRASTS AND CONNECTIONS -- Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine as Post- Soviet Rent-Seeking Regimes -- The Structure of Corruption: A Systemic Analysis -- The new East European patronal states and the rule-of-law -- Parallel System Narratives—Polish and Hungarian regime formations compared A structuralist essay -- List of Contributors -- Index